SHE SAYS .. .

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32678, 6 August 1971, Page 7

SHE SAYS .. .

Children can be frighteningly logical in a slightly misguided way at times: their actions make sense to them, but to an adult they seem unpredictable. On the road, especially, this can lead to tragedy. Such could easily have been the case with one kindergarten-age youngster whose mother told her “wait for the traffic” before crossing the road. The child did precisely that: she waited until the traffic arrived before she started to cross the road.

A similar sort of thing occurred in Christchurch a few days ago whei. a class of young children was being quizzed on road safety rules. They all knew that they must, before crossing the road, stop and look and listen both ways for any cars.

But one five-year-old said innocently: “On foggy days you don’t have to look, because you can’t see the cars anyway, so you just walk across.”

On the day in question there had been a heavy fog in the morning, and as usual only a few motorists used their dipped headlights while others drove with only their parking lights on, or more often with no lights on at all.

Perhaps they did think they could see all right, but did they think for one moment whether other people could see them? That child had accepted that fact that you couldn’t see cars in a fog—l wonder if she would have shown the same attitude if people always drove with their lights on in fog, so they could be seen?